


Oasis in the Darkest Desert

by FireEye



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: Concern about the future is a human matter.
Relationships: Fiona & Robo (Chrono Trigger), Fiona/Marco (Chrono Trigger), Lucca Ashtear & Robo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Oasis in the Darkest Desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siver/gifts).



Robo engineers a greenhouse for the first batch of saplings. Fiona tends them while he plans the most efficient growing pattern and irrigates the fields.

Marco tends the house, and the gardens. He cooks and cleans, while he and Fiona find soft moments, when they can.

At night, she and Robo watch the stars. She talks to him about her life, and asks him about his. He answers, when he can.

Lucca returns to visit almost every day, or so Fiona seems to think. Robo has a more accurate scale of time: Lucca returns when she _can_ , and every time she does she’s a little older, a little wiser, a little more weathered by the task she’s taken upon.

Robo warns Lucca not to tell him of what is to come, even when she’s bursting to. She doesn’t have to tell him she’s found him again; he knows that for her, it would have happened instantly, if it will happen at all. He tells her as much, but even so – he knows something in her has changed.

They’re already changing the future, when and where they please, but should he seek to alter their fate, he is finds himself concerned – such a strange, human thing – that they may never meet again.

Instead, she joins his strange new family for dinner. Or visits the grove of young trees that have taken root, reaching hungrily for the desert sun, to rest in their shade. Or suggests improvements to his irrigation system, or a better nutrient mix. Those rare times she stays the night, she spends them sleepless – checking his systems and cleaning the dust and grit from his gears.

Then, one day, Robo realizes that it has been a month since her last visit. Then a six weeks, then six months.

But there is planting to do.

A year since he has last seen Lucca, and Robo travels north.

The Time Gate is closed.

His sensors register only a weak temporal flux.

This eventuality was expected.

Well-planned and efficient, he makes entire trip in a matter of weeks. There are rumors of a frog knight in Guardia, and that will have to be enough of optimism. Setting his thoughts of Lucca aside, he busies his databanks with the task he has taken upon himself.

The grove has become an oasis surrounding Fiona’s house for a mile in every direction.

There are more saplings in the greenhouse to be planted – they were only sprouts when he left. 

Desert cats have taken up residence, but there is something strange about them – they are too friendly, too accustomed to humans – something about their behavior reminds Robo of Crono’s own domesticated feline. They, too, eventually come to dwell in the gardens and under the roof of Fiona’s villa.

Years drift by at a measured pace.

At night, Fiona and Robo watch the stars. She tells him of legends – some of which he already has stored from various sources, and some of which he has seen firsthand. Others still, he has never so much as heard of.

While she sleeps, he tends the grove.

Some nights, he thinks he spots a shadow lurking in the dark. He has checked his sensors, and finds upon further investigation and repetition that Fiona and Marco are always asleeps when it appears. It is too large to be any of the cats, and furthermore, they sense it too. It vanishes whenever he tries to approach it.

There are nights he sees it, and thinks it to be a Nu. But he finds he can never trust this data, inexplicably, the next morning.

It seems to do no harm to the budding forest. He feels no need to worry Fiona.

Still, Robo wonders.

One night, Fiona speaks in wonder of the stars, and Robo explains what he knows of how galaxies are formed. He keeps to himself the Dark Red Star, and the other horrors that he now suspects might lurk beyond the beauty of their small oasis in space.

She retires for the night, and Robo returns to his self-appointed task.

It is tireless work, and he has more time than he ever imagined to think. About Fiona. About time. About space. About the stars. About Lavos.

About Lucca, and what may have become of her.

He has now spent more days planting and overseeing trees grow than they have ever spent together. And he fears perhaps he was mistaken. That this will be his end, and they will never see one another again.

But, Robo thinks, she would have told him that, no matter what he might have asked of her. She would have – or will have – found a way.

 _Hope_.

Such a strange, human thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Please Accept: Some Robo rumination during his aside from saving the world project. <3


End file.
